Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WAGE-HOUR—CLASS ACTIONS—D. Mass.: Class certification denied in car rental manager’s overtime pay dispute, (Sep 19, 2025)

By Steven D. Cole, J.D.

The manager did not conclusively establish that questions of law or fact common to the class predominated over any questions affecting only individual members.

A federal district court in Massachusetts has denied a car rental manager’s motion for class certification, albeit without prejudice. An assistant branch manager for Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company of Boston alleged that the employer violated Massachusetts law by misclassifying its assistant branch managers (ABMs) as executives, thereby rendering them exempt from receiving overtime pay. Enterprise opposed the motion for class certification. The court determined that the Manager did not meet his burden of establishing predominance under Rule 23(b)(3) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (Bah v. Enterprise Rent-A-Car Company of Boston, LLC, No. 17-12542 (D. Mass. Sept. 16, 2025)).

Misclassification. According to the manager, Enterprise violated the overtime pay provision of the state’s Minimum Fair Wages Law by incorrectly classifying ABMs as executives. The statute at issue provides that employee are entitled to receive compensation for their employment in excess of 40 hours per week at a rate not less than one-and-one-half times their regular rate of pay. Specifically exempted from this provision, however, are “bona fide executive[s] earning more than eighty dollars per week.” Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 151, §1A.

To ultimately succeed in this action, the manager was required to counter Enterprise’s evidence that ABMs are bona fide executives. Such determinations involve a case-specific inquiry requiring the consideration of many factors, including the relative importance of exempt duties performed by the ABMs as compared with other types of duties, the amount of time spent performing exempt work, and the ABMs’ relative freedom from direct supervision.

Class certification. Before proceeding to the merits of the case, the manager had to make an initial showing that he met the Rule 23 requirements for certification as a class. For the purposes of the instant ruling, Enterprise opposed the manager’s motion for class certification, specifically challenging whether the manager met Rule 23(b)(3)’s mandate of “predominance,” under which a court must affirm that questions of law or fact common to class members predominate over any questions affecting only individual members.

The court conducted a hearing with the parties on May 15, 2025, at the conclusion of which the court ordered additional briefing on the predominance issue. After receiving those submissions, the court held that, “on the limited, incomplete evidentiary record before it, there is a meaningful question concerning whether [the Manager] has proven predominance as required by Rule 23(b)(3).” The court, therefore, denied the motion for class certification without prejudice. It ordered the parties to “confer and, by September 24, 2025, file, jointly if possible, but separately if necessary, a proposal and schedule for reasonable additional discovery to develop an adequate record for a decision on a renewed motion for class certification.”

Procedural missteps. In a footnote to the decision, the court explained that delays already incurred in this litigation were due to the manager’s delinquency: “As a result of several successive pleading errors by [the Manager] in seeking certification of a national [Fair Labor Standards Act] collective, ‘there was no operative complaint’ in this case until the federal statute of limitations had passed because the original complaint had to be amended twice, generating three motions to dismiss.” The “limited, incomplete evidentiary record” was also due, in part, to the manager’s failure to cooperate with Enterprise’s discovery requests.

Initially, Enterprise sought discovery from about 115 to 120 putative class members, whereas the manager opposed any class discovery. Eventually, the parties agreed to a compromise suggested by the magistrate judge whereby each party would select nine putative class members upon whom would be served discovery requests, and another nine would be chosen randomly. The manager, however, failed to select any putative class members, resulting in discovery requests being served upon 18 putative class members, nine of whom were selected by Enterprise and the other nine chosen randomly.

The case is No. 17-12542-MLW.

Judge: Wolf, M.

Attorneys: Shannon E. Liss-Riordan (Lichten & Liss-Riordan) for Mamadou Alpha Bah. Barry J. Miller (Seyfarth Shaw) for Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. of Boston, LLC and Enterprise Holdings, Inc.

Companies: Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. of Boston, LLC; Enterprise Holdings, Inc.

Cases: WageHour ClassActions EmployeeStatus StateLawClaims MassachusettsNews